Profile: Gary Bernsten

Gary Bernsten cut short his career with CIA to
publish his book, Jawbreaker. At Amazon dot com you can see 9/11
Commissioner John Lehman's smooth-over attempt to spin the awful truth among
the reviews of Jawbreaker.

by Gary Berntsen
and Ralph Pezzullo; copyright 2005 by Gary Berntsen and Ralph Pezzullo; Three
Rivers Press, imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, division of Random House,
Inc., New York,
www.crownpublishing.com ; ISBN-13: 978-307-35106-7 and ISBN-10
0-307-35106-8. EA note: Gary Berntsen was the CIA officer in charge during the
assault on Afghanistan in October, 2001, and the senior CIA official
overseeing the military operations from which Osama bin Laden was allowed - by
General Tommy Franks and CENTCOM - to escape, first from Kabul, then from
Jalalabad, and finally from Tora Bora, Afghanistan. Many parts of this book
were deleted by the CIA prior to publication.

Gary Bernsten was a participant
or observer in the following events:

In November 1997, an Egyptian named
Mustafa Mahmoud Said Ahmed walked into the US embassy in Nairobi, Kenya,
and told CIA officers of a group planning to blow up the embassy (see
November 1997). His warning would turn out to be a startlingly
accurate description of the 1998 US embassy bombing in Nairobi (see
August 7, 1998). Ahmed apparently is involved in the bombing of the US
embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that takes place the same day the
Nairobi embassy is bombed. One day after the attacks, Ahmed contacts the
British embassy and offers to help. He is overheard saying, “I told them
everything I knew.” He also tells the British that it was “not the first
time” he had cooperated with Western officials, and that he had been doing
so “since last year.” [New
York Times, 10/23/1998;
New York Times, 1/9/1999] CIA officer Gary Bernsten will later
reveal that he meets Ahmed as Ahmed is being kicked out of an allied
government’s embassy. Bernsten then interviews Ahmed, and while the
account of the interview is almost completely censored, Ahmed apparently
gives information that leads to the arrest of one of the embassy bombers
in Pakistan on August 15. This is the crucial break that allows the US to
conclusively determine al-Qaeda’s role in the bombings and arrest some of
the other bombers. [Berntsen
and Pezzullo, 2005, pp. 22-25] The US does not ask for Ahmed’s
extradition, and he is charged for the Tanzania bombing in that country.
The New York Times will report, “Several non-American diplomats in the
region [speculate] that the United States is allowing the Tanzanians to
try Mr. Ahmed because they fear his trial in America might bring to light
his dealings with American authorities and other Western intelligence
services.” [New
York Times, 10/23/1998;
New York Times, 1/9/1999] In March 2000, Tanzania will announce
that all charges against Ahmed have been dropped and he is being deported.
No reason will be given. [New
York Times, 3/20/2000]

Maj. Brock Gaston. [Source: State Department]CIA
official Gary Bernsten and a US Army Special Forces major known as Brock
(an apparent reference to Maj. Brock Gaston) lead a six-person team with
the mission to enter Afghanistan and capture one of bin Laden’s top aides.
The exact target is not specified; the team is expected to take advantage
of whatever opportunities present themselves. The team passes through
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, then meets up with Northern Alliance forces in
the part of Afghanistan still under their control. But from the very
beginning they encounter resistance from a CIA superior officer who is
based in a nearby country and is in charge of CIA relations with the
Northern Alliance. Known publicly only by his first name Lawrence, he
apparently had a minor role in the Iran/Contra affair and has a personal
dispute with Gaston. The team stays at Ahmad Shad Massoud’s Northern
Alliance headquarters high in the Afghan mountains for about two weeks.
However, they never have a chance to cross into Taliban territory for
their mission because Lawrence is sending back a stream of negative
messages to CIA headquarters about the risks of their mission. A debate
ensues back at headquarters. Cofer Black, head of the CIA’s Counter
Terrorist Center, and his assistant Hank Crumpton support continuing the
mission. But CIA Director George Tenet and his assistant Jim Pavitt cancel
the mission on March 25. Upon returning to the US, Bernsten, Gaston,
Black, and Crumpton formally call for Lawrence’s dismissal, but to no
effect. Bernsten will later comment that Black and Crumpton “had shown a
willingness to plan and execute risky missions. But neither CIA Director
George Tenet nor President Bill Clinton had the will to wage a real fight
against terrorists who were killing US citizens.” [CNN,
12/15/2001;
Berntsen and Pezzullo, 2005, pp. 43-64]

Veteran CIA
agent Gary Bernsten leads a CIA undercover team, codenamed Jawbreaker, to
capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan. In a 2005 book, also called
Jawbreaker, Bernsten will describe how his team monitored multiple
intelligence reports tracking bin Laden on a path through Jalalabad to
Tora Bora (see
November 13, 2001). He will claim that at the start of December 2001,
one of his Arabic-speaking CIA agents finds a radio on a dead al-Qaeda
fighter during a battle in the Tora Bora region. This agent hears bin
Laden repeatedly attempt to rally his troops. On the same radio, that
agent and another CIA agent who speaks Arabic hear bin Laden apologizing
to his troops for getting them trapped and killed by US aerial bombing.
Based on this information, Bernsten makes a formal request for 800 US
troops to be deployed along the Pakistani border to prevent bin Laden’s
escape. The request is not granted. Bernsten’s lawyer later claims, “Gary
coordinated most of the boots on the ground. We knew where bin Laden was
within a very circumscribed area. It was full of caves and tunnels but we
could have bombed them or searched them one by one. The Pentagon failed to
deploy sufficient troops to seal them off.” Although the area is heavily
bombed, bin Laden is able to escape (see
Mid-December 2001). [Berntsen
and Pezzullo, 2005, pp. 43-64;
London Times, 8/14/2005;
MSNBC, 12/29/2005;
Financial Times, 1/3/2006]

A Knight Ridder investigative report will
later conclude, “While more than 1,200 US Marines [sit] at an abandoned
air base in the desert 80 miles away, Franks and other commanders [rely]
on three Afghan warlords and a small number of American, British, and
Australian special forces to stop al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters from
escaping across the mountains into Pakistan.” Military and intelligence
officials warn Franks that the two main Afghan commanders cannot be
trusted. This turns out to be correct, as the warlords accept bribes from
al-Qaeda leaders to let them escape. [Knight
Ridder, 10/30/2004] In 2005, Bernsten will call himself a
supporter of Bush and will say he approves of how CIA Director Porter Goss
is running the CIA, but he will nonetheless sue the CIA for what he claims
is excessive censorship of his book. [London
Times, 8/14/2005;
MSNBC, 12/29/2005]

In the 2004 presidential campaign,
Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry accuses the Bush administration of
allowing bin Laden to escape Afghanistan in late 2001 by not sending
enough US troops to contain him when he was trapped in the Tora Bora
region. The New York Times publishes an op-ed by Gen. Tommy Franks, the
former head of US Central Command. Franks writes, “On more than one
occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in
Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He
claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to
escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we ‘outsourced’ the job
to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East,
I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that
the senator’s understanding of events doesn’t square with reality.… We
don’t know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December
2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in
Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora
was teeming with Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed
or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp.” Franks is a
vocal supporter of Bush’s reelection. [New
York Times, 10/19/2004] Shortly after Franks’ comments, four
Knight Ridder reporters who had been at Tora Bora during the battle
revisit the issue. They discover that “Franks and other top officials
ignored warnings from their own and allied military and intelligence
officers that the combination of precision bombing, special operations
forces, and Afghan forces that had driven the Taliban from northern
Afghanistan might not work in the heartland of the country’s dominant
Pashtun tribe.” [Knight
Ridder, 10/30/2004] Author Peter Bergen asserts, “There is
plenty of evidence that bin Laden was at Tora Bora, and no evidence
indicating that he was anywhere else at the time.” Bergen cites
after-action US intelligence reports and interviews with US
counterterrorism officials that express confidence bin Laden was at Tora
Bora. He notes that bin Laden discussed his presence at the Tora Bora
battle in a audio message released in 2003. [PeterBergen
(.com), 10/28/2004] In 2005, Gary Bernsten, who was in charge
of an on-the-ground CIA team trying to find bin Laden, will claim that he
gave Franks definitive evidence that bin Laden was trapped in Tora Bora
(see
Late October-Early December 2001). [Financial
Times, 1/3/2006] In 2006, former counterterrorism “tsar”
Richard Clarke will comment, “Yes, we know [bin Laden] absolutely was
there.… And yes, he did escape. And Gen. Franks and the president can deny
it until the cows come home, but they made a mistake. They did let him go
away.” [PBS
Frontline, 6/20/2006] In late 2006, it will be reported that
the CIA possesses a video showing bin Laden walking out of Afghanistan at
the end of the Tora Bora battle. It has not been reported if the CIA was
aware of this video in 2004 or not (see
Mid-December 2001).